Women business owners said they feel underrepresented in a number of industries. So it's particularly infuriating that the SBA chose categories that may not have many members. 

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 7, 2008; 

"Cabinet-making? It's ridiculous," said Jennifer Bisceglie, president of Interos Solutions an information technology consulting firm in McLean.

SBA spokesman Sean Rushton said the rules are intended to help, not hinder, a procurement process in which women-owned small businesses already are earning an increasing percentage of federal contract dollars. In 2006, these contracts totaled $11.6 billion, an increase from $1.4 billion in 2005.

The latest proposal "will only accelerate this process," Rushton said in an e-mail.

Women-run companies represent about 30 percent of all privately held firms nationally, but in 2006, the latest year for which data is available, they made up just 3.4 percent of government contracts, according to various surveys.

The battle to boost that percentage has been progressing for several years.

In 1994, Congress set a goal of awarding at least 5 percent of all federal small-business contracts to women-run companies, and six years later lawmakers directed the SBA to create a program to fulfill that goal.

In 2004, the U.S. Women's Chamber of Commerce sued the SBA for its failure to study underrepresented industries and publish the regulations necessary to implement the set-aside program. The D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the federal government was unreasonably delaying enactment.